The start of our Patagonian journey

A year ago my friend Vicki Braden and I set out on our 2-week Patagonian journey. It had been my dream to travel there for years.

We had flown into Punta Arenas the evening before and now were ready to drive almost 5 hours to our hotel in Torres del Paine. All we needed was our rental car. We were supposed to meet our rental car agent at the hotel at 9 am but we were waiting in the Lobby and nobody showed up! 9.30 am – still nothing. I finally called up the rental car company and was informed that, according to them, we were supposed to meet the following day – April 2nd, not April 1st. My contract clearly stated April 1st! Great, that’s what you get for starting your trip on April Fools Day! I immediately contacted my Chilean travel agent who had made the arrangements for us. Thankfully he was able to straighten out the situation and we finally were on our way, only about 2 hours later than planned.

The road to Puerto Natales is not exactly interesting and we were commenting how wonderful it would be if we would at least see a vaquero riding somewhere. Well, turns out April Fools Day had something even better in store for us! Vaqueros with a large herd of cattle! Right next to the road! We pulled over, opened the car doors and immediately were introduced to the extremely strong Patagonian wind which just about ripped the car doors out of our hands. Note to self – watch the wind direction when you park the car (and don’t open two doors at the same time as any loose items will get blown into the countryside). We grabbed our cameras and photographed the vaqueros and their dogs working the herd for quite some time. Wonderful!

After a quick coffee stop in Puerto Natales (I can highly recommend the Coffee Maker)  and refueling our car (there are no gas stations between here and Torres del Paine) we continued our journey along a gravel road towards the park.

And finally we had our first view of the famous mountain range!

We arrived at our hotel late afternoon and were elated that we were given a room with an incredible view!

We quickly checked in and headed out to scout the area. We found a location we were hoping to photograph at sunrise when some interesting looking clouds started to move in. Hoping we might just end up with a beautiful sunset we figured we would stay there despite the incredibly strong wind that had us holding on to our gear with all our strength. But our patience was rewarded! The clouds lit up beyond our imagination! Patagonia ended up greeting us with all it’s glory (unfortunately also with the notorious strong wind).

It had been the perfect day to start our journey!

For more images of my Patagonian adventure I invite you to take a look at my web gallery here.